Photo: WTCC Media

Menu wins in China, Huff takes championship lead

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Alain Menu took his fifth win of the season at Shanghai, whilst Rob Huff has taken the lead of the Championship after Yvan Muller was taken out on the opening lap, swinging the Championship into Huff’s favour.

There was a lot of contact in a chaotic start, with Yvan Muller trying to outdrag Alain Menu on the straight but fell behind team-mate Rob Huff in the first corner, quite pivotally as Muller then was hit by Norbert Michelisz, with Muller taking heavy damage to the right-hand side of his Chevrolet Cruze.

Cruzes were involved in contact all round, with Colin Turkington’s Team Aviva-Cofco Chevrolet taking damage to both sides and dropping down the order, whilst both of Bamboo Engineering’s Chevrolets were forced to retire.

Benefitting from all the carnage was Tom Boardman’s SEAT, who managed to carve his way through to seventh, which became sixth on lap three as he was able to pass Pepe Oriola’s damaged SEAT.

Norbert Michelisz had fallen down the order after the first lap contact, but was climbing back up the order in the Zengõ Motorsport BMW, fighting to grab as many points as he could in the Yokohama Independents’ Trophy, before the Hungarian was handed a drive-through penalty, which dropped him to 16th place and also out of the independents’ points paying positions.

Tiago Monteiro was also making good progress in the Honda Racing Team JAS Civic, moving past Fredy Barth’s SEAT for seventh on lap seven, whilst Pepe Oriola’s damage forced him into the pits.

Colin Turkington was able to work his way forward to finish in the points in eighth, closing on and passing the ROAL Motorsport BMW and Fredy Barth’s SEAT in the closing stages. Turkington was closing on Monteiro at the end, finishing just 0.093 seconds behind the Portuguese-driver.

Fredy Barth picked up points on his WTCC return in tenth, whilst Tom Chilton was the top finishing Ford driver in 14th place after James Nash was forced to retire with damage.

Menu’s win closes him two 28 points from the Championship lead, whilst Huff’s second place with Muller not scoring moves him into the points lead by 16 points.

In the independents’ trophy, neither Oriola or Michelisz scored which allowed Stefano D’Aste to close in to within 25 points of Michelisz, also finishing third overall in the race.

For race two, Tom Coronel is due to start from pole position in his BMW alongside Gabriele Tarquini.